[Rothbardian]

I was wondering if anybody has any ideas for getting rid of monetary currency altogether for functioning societies.

As anarchists in order to get rid of the shackles and chains of government or the state we must find ways to throw off their greatest influence of them all which is endorsed circulation of money but by mutualist endeavors that elevates us over them.

I have my ideas with bartering and something that I am working on called service exchange which is a mutualist economic system that doesn't use monetary currency as a medium of exchange.

Taxation is obviously out of the question for us anarchists which is why there would also have to be a way to get people to volunteer working and donating to greater public services beyond individual or household exchanges.

I would like to hear other people's opinions on this.

It seems obvious to me that when the state is gone, it will not be able to exploit concepts such as money. Right? There's nothing wrong with money, but there is something wrong with the violently imposed use of money that comes with statism.

[Kman]

Someone5, regarding the whole calculation problem, it is not simply a question of accounting and looking at what people use, it is also a question of whether this consumption is worth the production costs involved, you need to know the opportunity costs of a certain product and only capitalistic prices accomplish that. If your society was established with simple accounting measuring what was used the consumers and producers would have no way of measuring the opportunity costs of the various modes of production, I am sure the first thing that would sell out in your society would be the super-cars, the Ferrari's and Porsche 911 etc.. Now under your system that would show up as ''people like supercars so we need to expand super car production capacity in order to satisfy the people'', problem is just that super cars are very expensive production wise so that would mean you would have to cut down severily in other places, places like food production or healthcare production.
Simply looking at what products people would like to have is not enough, you need a way for consumers in the buying moment to be able to compare the overall costs of the product with other products, they need to be able to compare whether they value a new pool over a supercar and they need some way of knowing whether the supercar costs more than the pool otherwise you will get misalligned production patterns.

[mum]

Kman you simply do not understand.
Under socialism/communism money is basically infinite and everyone can have a Ferrari (and there are unicorns too!)

[Nunt]

If the means of production was collectivized instead of being privatized where it served the purposes of the public community that would be one more step closer in the abolition of monetary currency.

Would you really prefer this. If all the means of production are owned by the collective, then you either have to follow the collective or starve. More likely, the collective is probably being dominated by some leaders as it seems highly unrealistic that we will be able to find a way to collectively organize where everyone is equally powerfull. We haven't managed to obtain such organization so far. So basically, every form of human organization will involve some leaders.

If the collective owns all the means of production, then the collective is very powerfull. And so, the collective's leaders will be very powerfull too. Thus, there is a single and very powerful hierarchy to which every member of the community is subordinate. If you make an ennemy of one of the collective's leaders, then you have no escape. Sure, ideally individual members have a vote. But that really isn't a really powerfull tool. Many people would vote against the Iraq war, yet the countries leaders still started the war. Most Americans will never meet the president in person, so there is hardly any personal accountability in large groups.

If the means of production is privitized and you manage to antagonize one owner of capital, well theres dozens of others you can turn to. What true anarchy needs is a dispersion of power. Collectivized ownership of the means of production concentrates power.

The type of service exchange I have in mind is that so long as people labor into the community they should be able to enjoy all it's services freely.

Of course such a concept is problematic where there are those who feel they are entitled more than others. I am trying to figure out a workable system but must admit it's in the beginning stages.

Ultimately I don't believe in taxation or debt based monetary systems.

To find a workable system without money seems unneccisarely difficult. One function of money is that it serves as a common unit of account. Thus, it allows us to express different goods and services in the same denominator. How else would you compare the millions of goods and services with each other? If you have money then you only need to know its price in order to compare the value of that good with every other good. If you do not have money then you need to construct an exchange rate matrix containing the exchange rate between every good in the economy.

[Someone5]

Someone5, regarding the whole calculation problem, it is not simply a question of accounting and looking at what people use, it is also a question of whether this consumption is worth the production costs involved, you need to know the opportunity costs of a certain product and only capitalistic prices accomplish that. If your society was established with simple accounting measuring what was used the consumers and producers would have no way of measuring the opportunity costs of the various modes of production, I am sure the first thing that would sell out in your society would be the super-cars, the Ferrari's and Porsche 911 etc.. Now under your system that would show up as ''people like supercars so we need to expand super car production capacity in order to satisfy the people'', problem is just that super cars are very expensive production wise so that would mean you would have to cut down severily in other places, places like food production or healthcare production.
Simply looking at what products people would like to have is not enough, you need a way for consumers in the buying moment to be able to compare the overall costs of the product with other products, they need to be able to compare whether they value a new pool over a supercar and they need some way of knowing whether the supercar costs more than the pool otherwise you will get misalligned production patterns.

You are essentially aruing that there is no way to value things or to analyze opportunity costs without a market... with is demonstrably false. You seem to be laboring under the assumption that without markets, there would be no way that customers could know the cost of something... but of course that could simply be communicated directly, as I briefly described in that post you ignored.

Your complaint here seems to center around the idea that people will always maximize, and that there must therefore be a system in place to ration their consumption. But that complaint labors under the misconception that a moneyless economy is a drop-in replacement for money and markets under capitalism. Capitalism cannot be moneyless; but socialism certainly could be. Why? Because a socialist society would stop inculcating the "value" of maximization, and instead simply let people make informed decisions.

Markets can be replaced; and could even be replaced by a system without money. Just like markets replaced feudalism. And like the transition from master to market produced profound changes in the social conditions of human beings, so too would a transition from markets to autonomy produce the sort of social changes that would allow a moneyless economy.

[Someone5]

Kman you simply do not understand.
Under socialism/communism money is basically infinite and everyone can have a Ferrari (and there are unicorns too!)

There wouldn't be a lot of demand for high end luxury goods once the novelty of being able to acquire them wore off. These sorts of goods are valuable mainly because they're hard to get. That wouldn't be the case in a moneyless socialist economy. This is, I think, a common example of a capitalists failure of imagination. Socialism isnt capitalism with no money; just like capitalism is not feudalism with markets. A change in the economic system like that would certainly change societies as well; and adjust demands too.

To put this very simply, a geunine socialist society would measure its prosperity not by how many Ferraris it has, but by how many of their citizens had genuinely sufficient transportation. A socialist would look at a Ferrari and wonder why those resources were wasted upon realizing that others had no car at all.

And yes, that does constitute a change in social outlooks, and how people value things. It isnt unicorns though; Socialism wont exist until people reach that point for themselves. Having a society that views consumption in those terms is a precondition for socialism to even exist.

[Eran]

A socialist would look at a Ferrari and wonder why those resources were wasted upon realizing that others had no car at all.

Are you aware of any examples from any society at any point in human history in which individuals (as individuals) didn't strive for greater material gains?

I guess one could find isolated examples of small, religious communities in which that was the case. Any wide-scale and/or long-lasting examples?

My point is that while history shows great variations in how human societies are organised, including which non-material goods people value, some fundamental aspects of human nature reoccur with such persistence as to make it highly plausible that they are manifestation of fundamental human nature, not subject to cultural variations.

[Someone5]

Are you aware of any examples from any society at any point in human history in which individuals (as individuals) didn't strive for greater material gains?

Not among agricultural societies, no. Then again, there was a point in history where you could have asked the question "has there ever been an example of any city-dwelling society at any point in human history with an economy not built upon chattel slavery?" and the answer would have been no. Societies change based on material conditions; as conditions improve, society progresses. At least as it refers to material gain, there is the obvious counter-example to be found among hunter-gatherers; at least some of which clearly demonstrated contempt for maximization and ridiculed those who pursued it.

The point I was really trying to make, however, was that the socialist wouldn't view a Ferrari as a symbol of material gain. How you value "material gain" is cultural--and just as easily definable as communal prosperity as individual prosperity. It's pretty easy for societies to translate communal pride into actual action. Hell, anyone who's ever done something out of civic duty, or boasted about how their country is the best at this or that, knows how that works. That sort of impetus only makes more sense in a society that actually distributes power--one built upon principles of communal "ownership" and such.

And as individuals there are certainly plenty of people who set aside material gains for some other goal; often something altruistic. There are tons of examples of people who give up high-paying jobs to work in charity work and such. Hell, I gave up work in a much higher paying field because I found it ethically questionable. I know this may come as a shock to libertarians, but not everyone measures their gains in life by how much stuff they get. Lots of people have other goals in mind, like making sure they have enough free time to balance work and life, making sure they can spend time raising their children, doing something they feel is important to society, etc.

I guess one could find isolated examples of small, religious communities in which that was the case. Any wide-scale and/or long-lasting examples?

I thought you were wanting to know about individuals? If you want to know about societies, well, any slave society would qualify. Those were societies that were structured in a way that caused people to forgo their own material prosperity in order to prop up someone else. There are plenty of examples of societies with a slave-to-owner ratio that would have logically led to a successful slave rebellion; that didn't happen very often mainly because of the extensive systems of control and fear that were used to keep slaves suppressed. Conditioning and psychological warfare are both potent weapons in the struggle for elites to control the people who serve them.

Hell, let's look at the modern American economy. Anyone working for minimum wage is essentially working merely to cover their costs of living. That's it. They certainly could be doing something else that leads to much greater material gain, but for various reasons they have decided not to pursue those careers. Maybe they have children to take care of, maybe they can't afford to go back to school, maybe they don't have the basic capital required to move to a better location, whatever. Yet millions upon millions of people decide that living near the minimum wage is "good enough" and do not strive for any greater material gain than that.

I mean, in an abstract sense those people might wish for more money, but for whatever reason they're unable or unwilling to do what is required to make more than that. One cannot really characterize an idle wish as "striving for" something. Let's extend that a bit more. There are lots of people who are in the middle class who are happy enough with their position in life. There are lots of people who don't want promotions, and are happy with the jobs they have. It may seem kind of unbelievable to people with deeply ingrained elite values, but there are actually people who are happy in life without some raging desire to have more than that. Lots of people, actually.

What is actually the case is that elites and those who have internalized elite values do actually engage in some mindless race towards the top. That is certainly nothing like a universal human value.

My point is that while history shows great variations in how human societies are organised, including which non-material goods people value, some fundamental aspects of human nature reoccur with such persistence as to make it highly plausible that they are manifestation of fundamental human nature, not subject to cultural variations.

Fear of mathematics is common and cross-cultural. That does not make it human nature. Capitalists like to look at history and see common threads and say "oh, well, these common things that people do must all be based on some common human nature," while ignoring the other option--that human opinions are built by cultures, cultures are built upon a set of material conditions, and some of those material conditions have historically been common across the human experience.

Let me put it another way. A thousand years ago, illiteracy was rampant across the world. Almost no one could read, and that was essentially the same across almost every society. Would it have been correct to say that illiteracy was a product of human nature a thousand years ago? Let's go back to the slavery example; for almost all of human history, agricultural societies have been built upon chattel slavery. There are a very few rare examples of agricultural societies that were not--resistance to chattel slavery could not in any way be characterized as common. Could we then say that slavery is human nature? I don't think so, but by the criteria you establish that is so. Indeed, most historical societies have been established under hereditary rule by a despot; would we consider hereditary despotic rule to be human nature? I do not believe any of these things are "human nature"; but going by your argument they certainly must be, and this brief experiment with capitalism is doomed to failure at the hands of human nature. That has some fairly problematic implications for a libertarian capitalist. Because let's face it, most of human history has not involved capitalism, nor freedom, nor a concept of human rights.

I think such assertions are rather ridiculous--but then again, I don't believe in human nature. I think that, for the most part, humans get defined within the contours of their culture. I think humans have free will and the agency by which to adjust their culture, and by extension adjust the opinions and practices of the people around them. I believe that it is possible to make slavery a moral wrong; even if your argument would suggest that it is fundamental human nature.

[Eran]

Then again, there was a point in history where you could have asked the question "has there ever been an example of any city-dwelling society at any point in human history with an economy not built upon chattel slavery?" and the answer would have been no. Societies change based on material conditions; as conditions improve, society progresses.

I appreciate the nature of the point you are making. I make a similar point often myself, trying to argue that a stable, modern and prosperous anarchist society is possible, despite lack of historic precedence.

When I look at historic examples, though, I try to distinguish between those attributes which indeed change, based on both material conditions (technology, relative abundance of various resources, etc.) and cultural peculiarities (e.g. the role of the Catholic Church in medieval Europe, or the changed attitude of both Japanese and German people towards war since after WWII), and those which seem to be a stable reflection of universal human nature.

It is perfectly legitimate to aspire for a society which different set of cultural preferences. It is futile to aspire for one in which fundamental human nature is different.

Hunter-gatherer societies demonstrate contempt towards personal accumulation of wealth when it is perceived to be contrary to the survival needs of a small, close-knit community. Yet even hunter-gatherers show off, paint their bodies, aspire for jewelry and, of course, for practical material goods (clothing, metal tools, etc.) that make life more comfortable.

The point I was really trying to make, however, was that the socialist wouldn't view a Ferrari as a symbol of material gain. How you value "material gain" is cultural--and just as easily definable as communal prosperity as individual prosperity. It's pretty easy for societies to translate communal pride into actual action. Hell, anyone who's ever done something out of civic duty, or boasted about how their country is the best at this or that, knows how that works. That sort of impetus only makes more sense in a society that actually distributes power--one built upon principles of communal "ownership" and such.

I agree - in part. It is easy to imagine a society in which sport cars aren't the object of desire, just as, say, people today might look down on those aspring to wear large quantity of golden chains and fancy rings.

What is much more difficult is to imagine a society in which people do not aspire for any luxury material objects, or other status symbols.

And as individuals there are certainly plenty of people who set aside material gains for some other goal; often something altruistic.

Agreed.

I know this may come as a shock to libertarians, but not everyone measures their gains in life by how much stuff they get. Lots of people have other goals in mind, like making sure they have enough free time to balance work and life, making sure they can spend time raising their children, doing something they feel is important to society, etc.

Not only does it not come as a shock, it is a point thoughtful libertarians are making forcefully and consistently, at least since Adam Smiths "The Theory of Moral Sentiments".

This fact is why I am so optimistic about the moral nature of a free society, one in which mutual help is accomplished without government compulsion.

Having some people who are altruistic (in the true sense, i.e. those helping others with their own resources, rather than Robin Hoods who rob some to help others) isn't the same as realistically hoping that most members of society are of that nature.

Hell, let's look at the modern American economy. Anyone working for minimum wage is essentially working merely to cover their costs of living. That's it.

That's not exactly what you meant to say, I don't think. Anybody who isn't saving (regardless of their income or standard of living) is essentially working merely to cover their cost of living. The difference is that those on minimum wage have to settle (assuming unrealistically that their wages are their sole source of income) for a relative modest standard of living (relative, that is, to other Americans).

They certainly could be doing something else that leads to much greater material gain, but for various reasons they have decided not to pursue those careers.

I am not sure about that. More often than not, minimum wage workers lack the experience and work habits required to make much more money. But in some cases, I am sure you are right.

What is actually the case is that elites and those who have internalized elite values do actually engage in some mindless race towards the top. That is certainly nothing like a universal human value.

Elites values tend to filter down to the rest of society. "Those who have internalized elite values" form the majority of most societies. And yes, a mindful (not "mindless") race towards the top (or at least towards a higher place than where you are now) is a fairly universal human value. And fortunately so.

Without the desire to improve our lot, humans would be stuck in hunter-gatherer level of existence. A society made of content minimum-wage workers will quickly degenerate to bare survival. People in modern America can afford to subsist as minimum wage workers only thanks to the greater numbers who choose to work much harder (and smarter), almost always for personal gain.

I don't believe in human nature. I think that, for the most part, humans get defined within the contours of their culture.

How then do you explain the large number of universals, found across all human societies? For example:
1. Organisation of society into small families, typically centered around a husband and wife
2. Tendency to help others, but with quickly-diminishing intensity, as those others are more remote from the individual - strong urge to help first-degree relatives, a weaker urge to help more remote relatives, friends and neighbours, and a much lower tendency to help, often outright hostility towards out-of-group strangers
3. Near universal aspiration for more material goods
4. Respect for (culturally-legitimised) authority
5. Preference for leisure over labour

Note - there will be, in every society, individual exceptions to the above, but I know of no exceptions to the principle that in every human society, the universals listed above apply for most members.

[Paradigm]

It seems to me that getting rid of money altogether could be done if you reorganized population patterns so that people lived in relatively self-sustaining communities of a few hundred, and then had these communities barter with each other. It would essentially be the Neolithic village, but updated with more modern technology, and more interconnected with other communities. Whether such a society is preferable, I'm not sure. My general disposition is that I think exchange should be conducted to whatever extent possible on the basis of mutual aid, but I'm not opposed to the use of some form of currency like mutual credit or labor notes for more complicated exchanges that may require it.

[humanityresurrected]

There's always the notion of throwing it away.
"Here is one example. This is a train which goes from London to Paris. The question was given to a bunch of engineers, about 15 years ago, "How do we make the journey to Paris better?" And they came up with a very good engineering solution, which was to spend six billion pounds building completely new tracks from London to the coast, and knocking about 40 minutes off a three-and-half-hour journey time. Now, call me Mister Picky. I'm just an ad man ... ... but it strikes me as a slightly unimaginative way of improving a train journey merely to make it shorter. Now what is the hedonic opportunity cost on spending six billion pounds on those railway tracks?

Here is my naive advertising man's suggestion. What you should in fact do is employ all of the world's top male and female supermodels, pay them to walk the length of the train, handing out free Chateau Petrus for the entire duration of the journey. (Laughter) (Applause) Now, you'll still have about three billion pounds left in change, and people will ask for the trains to be slowed down."


To the notion of whom is more important.
a group of 8 children 7-11, and they were given a cardboard sign status titled baby, mother, astronaut, janitor, rock star, NBA player, doctor, lawyer. The assignment was to position themselves in order of their importance in front of the rest of the group. How could something so harmless turn int Star Wars and Virginia Woolf? Lets see how it turned out, shall we?

First let me say while doctors help more than they kill, they are still not flawless, and certainly not God. Heaven for bis i was right, when i tried to tell them something, and let thier ego take over, because they are so much better than i am.

So the astronaut steps up and say's; "im first because im going places, where the rest of you cant go yet. And, besides, im going to try and find us another place to live, cause earth is too crowded.

Rockstar steps up and pushes astro boy back to second. Im already in outerspace and i make the most money, and could buy you as my pilot on my private jet. next comes the NBA player. I think i should go first. I make just as much money as rockstar and i play in font of a big crowd every night, all season, doing something physical, which is far better for you. Up walks the "doctor" who makes a run at first. I should go first because i fix all of you when you're injured or sick, and i make good money too.

up walks the lawyer for the best of the best, because i can keep you in jail or out, and you have to pay me all your money. Up walks mother. I really should go first, because i brought you into this world. Her comes baby. i should go first because we were all babies before we were anything else. That still leaves the janitor role. As usual they know better than to try to go to the front. Those who play that role dont try, because they'll be laughed at. as soon as they speak they are laughed at or poked fun at so much, that they are too embarrassed to continue. Even though the game is voluntary. Every time the game is played janitor is automatically number eight.

At the end of the seminar they children are reminded of how they were supposed to position themselves in order of importance, instead of the dog eat dog, king of the mountain. All that was required to do was hold hands and stand in front of the group in a circle of mutual respect. For there will never be a person who is more important than any other person, no matter how they look and no matter what kind of work they do. Each of them is as valuable and worthwhile as any other person. They sai they only heard that in church, and that it was a shame they couldn't see this ourselves. Its because we dont do as we are told, but what we see. We live in a narcissistic society. Dont confuse narcissism with healthy self esteem. It would seem that the janitor has a self esteem problem, wouldnt you say say?

What if automation took over and all these jobs were obsolete? https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... j9MD#gid=0
"Eventually, somebody came up with the slogan, “8 hours of work, 8 hours of leisure, 8 hours of sleep” to divide the 24-hour day into what was considered a fair allocation of a human’s time. It wasn’t a slogan that was immediately accepted. People had to fight to put this standard in place. People demonstrated, and fought with police, and were killed. They were called communists (in fairness, some of them were), and traitors, and many of them got a lot worse than pepper spray at the hands of police and private security."

So the question is what would you do if machines gave us water, food, housing, healthcare, and all the basic human needs?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/ ... ved-brazil

[Demosthenes]

Someone5- great posts, as usual.

The type of service exchange I have in mind is that so long as people labor into the community they should be able to enjoy all it's services freely.

Of course such a concept is problematic where there are those who feel they are entitled more than others. I am trying to figure out a workable system but must admit it's in the beginning stages.

Ultimately I don't believe in taxation or debt based monetary systems.

Man, I love that emboldened line. This is exactly the kind of thing I have in mind, to be honest. What I'd like to see, and what Someone5 hit on once or twice is not a total and complete end to all things monetary, though I loathe the current system of money and the industry behind it.

Money is ok when its not a business in and of itself. Money is ok when money is money and 1 Demonote is 1 Demonote. Its not ok on any level when fractional reserve banking principles rule all, and when some snakeskin British moneymen can sit in their Ivory towers and plug in any interest rates they choose simply to...

Ah, but you guys know what I mean. I don't have to go into it all.

So, you put in 8 hours or so a day, and you work. Whatever your job is, you work. Maybe its one you have your whole life, maybe its one you "test" into, maybe its one you hold for four years and then move on, maybe your first job is a "term of service" to the community where you do the crap work to earn your place, and following that you move into something better. Anyway, whatever it is, you just do it. In doing so, you receive all your basic needs (as defined by Maslow, outside of sex which you are on your own to create) which includes food, medicine, shelter, transportation, whatever. Now, as an aside you also receive an income that may be used for anything outside this social economy. Save for a fancier house if you like, buy a glass dragon. Eat an extra hamburger... whatever. But your life and livelihood are never in danger as long as you put in your 8 hours (or whatever)/

As for the long rambling thing about corruption. Sure, it exists, and sure it will exist in any system much as its completely rampant beyond all reason in today's capitalism. But the fact that some will be corrupt is no reason to disregard another system entirely. Especially one that aims for serving the vast majority of the people.

I love when avowed capitalists come out of the woodwork to point out that someone in our *Utopia* which isn't a Utopia at all will be corrupt. I'm like... "Yeah, so? Capitalists are corrupt now. I'm not trying to fix the human spirit, I'm trying to get cogs to "a" through 'z' instead of just to 'a' and the rest if they can afford it."

[Eran]

This model has been tried out in Israel - this is how a Kibbutz works.

The model had reasonable success when the members of the community were self-selected for a high degree of ideological commitment to the project.

It died with the decline in such commitment in newer generations.

[Demosthenes]

I see no point in the two of us debating. We will always be hopelessly in complete disagreement on the most basic of principles. You measure the success of any society by the number of gadgets it produces, and you see the most value in any individual by their ability to form better ways to make said gadgets.

Among other major and irreconcilable differences, this one, and your unwillingness to consider anything else makes meaningful communication irrelevant and uninteresting.

[Eran]

It is possible that we cannot communicate. But at the very least, we should dispel any misconceptions regarding each other's position.

For example, you write "You measure the success of any society by the number of gadgets it produces" which is totally false.

I measure the success of a society by the degree to which it meets the desires of its members. It happens to be a matter of historic fact (rather than metaphysical inevitability) that humans tend to like gadgets, and prefer living in societies that are able to produce many of them. But the ultimate standard is always the subjective preferences of individuals within society.

Thus my comment on Israeli Kibbutzim. I have no problem whatsover, and would consider a Kibbutz a great success if it keeps its members happy, even at the cost of a lower standard of living than surrounding society.

The Kibbutz movement is a failure, in my opinion, not because it failed in gadget production, but because its own members are either living it, or moving to change its unique character to be much more in-line with mainstream western values.

[Demosthenes]

we should dispel any misconceptions regarding each other's position.

There is no misconception on my part whatsoever. I know exactly what you are.

which is totally false.

Except it's totally and completely accurate on all levels.

I measure the success of a society by the degree to which it meets the desires of its members. It happens to be a matter of historic fact (rather than metaphysical inevitability) that humans tend to like gadgets, and prefer living in societies that are able to produce many of them.

None of this is anything more than your hocus pocus. What you've said here is completely unprovable by any scientific measure. You can't possibly begin to account for a meaningful sample of humans who "tend to like gadgets" and the very notion that you attempt to say it with any authority whatsoever makes the thought of debating you tedious, and a waste of my time.

I return to my previous comment. There is no point in writing at one another as I'm not about to waste my fingers on points you are not capable of dealing with in furthering the debate.

Go back to writing at someone who has the patience to handle you, like someone5.

[Rothbardian]

A socialist would look at a Ferrari and wonder why those resources were wasted upon realizing that others had no car at all.

Could honestly respect a socialist that actually lived by their ideals like this. I'd still think he was very confused, but at least I could respect the guy. Have yet to meet one though.

There are lots of people out there without any cars at all. I'd ask you to confirm that you don't drive, but you're obviously a hypocrite considering you've bought a computer and are paying for internet whilst there are people in the world that don't have these things.

The socialist schtick seems to be to create abstract ideals that can be applied to everyone else.

[mum]

A valid post by Eran.
Demostroll are you just too narrow minded to debate with anyone who disagrees with you?

[humanityresurrected]

Rothbardian typed;

There are lots of people out there without any cars at all

That's what i love most of all, more cars than people whom drive.I also understand if more cars are on the road, more backed up traffic, so is there a better way. Also with today's technology, cars should not be getting into accidents. Are our lives better than money? Back in the day when cars got into accidents and a head went threw the windshield, they were called glass necklaces. So they made windshields better, and more safety features. Today cars can stop themselves. I also love that every Dollar Store, K-Mart, Wal_mart store, ETC. has the same stock on the shelves, and if it doesnt sell it goes to obsolescence. Best of all, the grocery stores that throw food in the garbage, because its a day too old.

Cyclical Consumption
For instance, our use of a profit based, "growth" driven monetary system has become one of the greatest destroyers of the natural world and sustainable human values. The entire global economy requires "cyclical consumption" to operate, which means that money must constantly be circulating. Thus, new goods and services must be constantly introduced regardless of the state of the environment and actual human necessity. This "perpetual" approach has a fatal flaw for resources as we know it are simply not infinite. Resources are finite and the Earth is essentially a closed system. To assume the need for constant consumption to keep people employed and hence the market system going is eco-cidal on a finite planet. The true goal of an economy, by definition, is to strategically preserve and create efficiency. The system today demands the opposite

[Eran]

That's what I love most of all, more cars than people whom drive.I also understand if more cars are on the road, more backed up traffic, so is there a better way.

But note - as long as each car has one driver, we can never have more cars on the road than people who drive them!

If we do have more cars than people, some of those cars must be idle at any one time.

Compare cars to shirts. We have many more shirts than people, but the number of shirts being worn at any one time is limited by the number of people.

Is there a problem with having many shirts per person? Obviously not. So why assume there is a problem with having many cars per person? What if cars were cheap enough that each of us had as many cars as shirts, and we could choose a different car every day? What's the problem with that?

For instance, our use of a profit based, "growth" driven monetary system has become one of the greatest destroyers of the natural world and sustainable human values.

I think you mean "production system" rather than "monetary system". And what exactly are "sustainable human values"?

To argue that the current system "requires" consumption is preposterous (in the literal sense of putting what's behind, in front). Does our health-care system "require" sick people? Does our education system "require" ignorance? Does our police "require" criminals? And if so, are those arguments against health-care, education and police?